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Former Miller-St. Nazianz CEO receives tech-ed award

Sheboygan Press Media
Published 3:30 p.m. CT Feb. 21, 2015

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John C. Miller poses inside the Kohler Center for Manufacturing Excellence at Lakeshore Technical College earlier this month. Miller recently won the Technical Education Champion Award, which is an annual award given to supporters of the state’s technical college system.(Photo: Gary C. Klein/Sheboygan Press Media)Buy Photo

As the retired CEO of a family-owned agricultural business, John C. Miller understands the important role a technical college can play in a community.

The 72-year-old Kohler resident spent 35 years at the helm of Miller-St. Nazianz before he retired and handed the reigns to his son. The company, which Miller's great grandfather started in 1899, grew from installing barn roofs to manufacturing sophisticated pieces of equipment that applied fungicides, herbicides and fertilizer to fields all around the world, said Miller.

After five generations of Miller men running the company, Miller's son sold it last fall to CNH Industrial, the company behind brand names including Case IH and New Holland farming equipment.

While at the helm of the family business, Miller said he saw the value of having a local college like Lakeshore Technical College that could provide the skilled workers he and his family members employed — to the point that the company paid for about 20 employees to obtain a degree at the school at various points.

"It (LTC) became a real important resource for us as a manufacturer," Miller said. "I just became a believer in it, and I just thought that (LTC President) Mike Lanser and the current group is providing the kind of services the community needs to provide trained people for the current needs of the Manitowoc and Sheboygan communities."

Miller's support of the school recently earned him the Technical Education Champion Award, given annually to one nominee among the 16 schools in the state's Technical College System.

The award, which the Wisconsin Technical College District Boards Association honored Miller with last month, recognizes an individual or organization for outstanding contributions, mainly in the areas of financial support and promotion of a school in the system.

"He's been very active and supportive of the college in a number of ways," said Lanser. "The thing to me that is most important is when you have someone with John's role in the community, a business owner — when they choose to spend their time and allocate their resources to make a difference in students' lives, you just can't say enough about that."

Miller's involvement with LTC extends back decades. Prior to his time with the family business, he was an attorney, offering services to LTC for a period.

He also more recently provided financial backing for some of LTC's Student Success initiatives, including the Financial Literacy program, which helps individuals struggling with personal finances to obtain a degree; the Students of Color Scholarships, which provide tuition, program fees and student support annually to 10 students in an underrepresented population; and the LTC Bridge Program, which assists beginning college students and Adult Basic Education students in transitioning to college degree programs.

Miller currently serves on the LTC Foundation and recently served as honorary chairman of the Kohler Center for Manufacturing Excellence Capital Campaign, which raised $2.3 million in order to expand and remodel facilities on the LTC Cleveland campus.

"There just weren't enough hours in the day given the number of machines in places they (LTC) had to be able to educate as many people as there were jobs," Miller said. "In today's manufacturing world, people who don't have specific manufacturing skills get kind of left behind, and they'll get a job where they'll never really earn more other than inflation because their skill isn't really different than anyone else you can just bring in."

After years of support of the school, Miller said he was honored to receive the award.

"It's a real compliment," Miller said. "I think the Technical School System is providing a lot of benefit for people who don't want to take a four-year degree and want to provide a skill, and in today's world, there's a lot of space for them."